Thursday, November 19, 2009

Memories of an Artist and her Art. Memories of Jean-Claude.

Jean-Claude, one half of the environmental artist duo known as Christo and Jean Claude, passed away yesterday. New Yorkers will remember this pair for the orange sheets that swept over Central Park for 15 days during the winter of 2005. The Gates was a project that, I will admit, seemed ridiculous to me at the time. To spend so much time and resources to erect a temporary sea of orange flags didn't [and doesn't] make full sense to me. But after I mocked the project for many days, I did finally go. I went with a friend. And I'm sure we were freezing. And I'm sure we had snacks as we often did back then. But we went, as did countless other New Yorkers. And we all walked through Central Park that February to gawk, and mock and wonder at miles of orange trail that, as ridiculous as it was, was really quite tremendous.